Steamboat - Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Tuesday morning we woke up to snow. Snow is much more appreciated on a ski vacation than at home. It was pretty and exciting. We went out that morning dressed for colder skiing and got out around 10:30. Mark was skiing with his family that day so Cornbread and I were by ourselves. We went to the back side of the mountain - Morningside Peak.

We got to the top of the lift and looked down one of the only runs off of that peak - Huevos. It was a black diamond mogul run with pines near the bottom on either side of it. We weren't super confident, but we decided to try it. We both fell many, many times:)

When we finally got to the end of the moguls we veared off into the trees on the left side of the run. There were trails through the trees and the snow was was soft. We took turns leading through the trees - a very basic game of follow the leader. Cornbread, though, decided not to follow me straight into one of the pine trees that I got a little intimate with;)

I wasn't necessarily hugging the tree, but I was caught up in the branches and my skis were crossed. The snow was deep and my right ski was covered, so every time I tried to free myself the other end of it would get caught under the snow. I finally popped my skis off and went to step out of the tree and immediately sank up to my knee in snow. I still had my left ski on and it was on top of the snow - I had enough leverage to get myself out of the snow, however, once I did so I took another step and immediately sank up to my HIP! I was laughing so hard. At this point my left ski was in the same position as before, but I had no leverage to get myself out so Cornbread had to help me out by pulling... after which he immediately fell over. I thought I was going to wet my pants - we were laughing so hard.

We skied that run several times because we were having so much fun - on the moguls and in the trees. That side of the mountain was pretty empty - we were basically the only ones back there, which made it even nicer.

When we decided to move on from Morningside Peak, we went over to Storm Peak. At this point the snow was coming down harder and the visibility was terrible. We were also so high up on the mountain that we were skiing through a cloud - making the visibility even worse. At this point I was wet and cold and the snow was stinging my face as we skied down the mountain, I couldn't see what I was skiing over - bumps, moguls, ice, etc - couldn't see it. I told Cornbread that I was skiing because I felt obligated to do so - not because I wanted to or was enjoying it. He agreed, so we made our way over to get some lunch and then made our way back to the resort.

We had been invited to have dinner with the product partner that was on the trip with us. We were looking forward to a nice dinner at L'Apogee. From what we could tell, it appeared to be an extremely high end restaurant - but in Steamboat, everything is still casual so we could wear jeans;) We were definitely looking forward to a really nice (free) meal!

We met our group at 6:30. There were 4 other EJ FA's and spouses/guests along with the product partner. The wholesaler's wife was back at the resort with their sick 2 year old son, so he was on his own. One of the other FA's (and his guest) were on our trip to Cabo in October 2008, so we chatted with them quite a bit. There was also a couple from Virginia, a couple from Sheboyagan, WI and another couple from the south - Mississippi perhaps? The wife of the Sheboyagan FA sat next to me and was drunk when she arrived. She is 35 (her husband is 56 and has been with the firm for 19 years) and was pretty much being an idiot because she was drunk. I don't normally do this, but I tried to avoid engaging her in conversation. It was pretty obnoxious, actually.

The dinner was lovely, though. Cornbread ordered a filet mignon that was $7/ounce - what? I had the sea bass, some escargot, some really nice merlot, and a wonderful creme brulee. The food was great. The dinner took FOREVER. Between every course the servers cleared the table, left the room and then came back with new utensils. I think we ended up being there for 3 hours, which was a little long and we got back to the room too late to do anything afterward so we went to bed, hoping for a better day of skiing in the morning.